How They Pulled It Off: A Sprawling Garden Inspired by a Neighboring National Park
A Sydney home’s landscaping takes cues from the park’s all-native botanicals and materials like Cor-Ten steel and sandstone.
A Sydney home’s landscaping takes cues from the park’s all-native botanicals and materials like Cor-Ten steel and sandstone.
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
When homeowners Andrew and Kristina de Ambrosis enlisted Outdoor Establishments, a Sydney-based landscape design and construction firm, to build out the gardens surrounding their modern house and pool, the project essentially started from scratch. The house, designed by Richard Cole Architecture, was built in the mid 2010s; Outdoor Establishments got involved in 2021.
In the front lawn, a water feature was installed, "which we saw as an opportunity to emulate the cascading creek and downstream river," says Graham. "It was carved on-site from a boulder that we craned in." The plants are 90% native to Sydney, including the bed of pink flowers called kangaroo paws.
Natalie Hunfalvay
"Sometimes people get what I call ‘construction fatigue,’ where they’ve spent a year and a half on a build and they’re over it. They finished the project and the family had been living on turf and the relics of a post-construction garden for about five years," says Trystan Graham, cofounder of Outdoor Establishments. Graham and his partner Matthew Hook used the homeowners’ familiarity with the property to their advantage when it came to the build. "It gave them time to really understand the landscape and how they use the outdoor space. They gave us a comprehensive and informative brief of what they wanted," says Graham.
The homeowners, who are both engineers, already appreciated good design that also problem-solves, so Outdoor Establishments leaned into the couple’s pragmatic mindset.
At the front of the house are large bedroom windows, which were initially exposed to the street. "We’ve got sun-loving plants like coral bark Japanese maples, swamp banksia, lilly pilly, and grevilleas to provide shelter and privacy to the house," says Graham.
Natalie Hunfalvay
Graham mentions the site was "unbelievably challenging because of the hill" since heavy rains run off to the creek, which impacted construction. "We made changes to the drainage because of how much water was moving through the site and we needed to protect it from weather damage."
Natalie Hunfalvay
See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: A Sprawling Garden Inspired by a Neighboring National Park
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